Early this year, on a brisk but clear morning in Chelyabinsk, Russia, a chunk of rock half the diameter of the ill-fated Hindenburg
entered the atmosphere and exploded. With a velocity of over Mach 60, the meteor carried with it more energy than some nuclear bombs. Luckily, only a small part of this energy was
transferred to the residents of Chelyabinsk below. Still, the ensuing kinetic tsunami damaged over 7,000 buildings and injured over 1,000 people. It was
the biggest object to enter our skies in over a hundred years—literally a once-in-a-lifetime event. Thanks to today’s technology, and the interesting
ubiquity of Russian dashboard cameras, thousands saw it and science confirmed it.

***

Late night on a dirt road, a man in a pickup truck flips on his high beams. The road is uneven and shaky, insects on errant paths ping off the headlights,
stars flicker in the sky. But one star doesn’t flicker quite right. The man brings his truck to a slow crawl, to stop his bumping and bobbing. An object
moves at an unnatural speed towards him. It stops above him emitting an eerie glow. In a flash, it disappears into the dark of space faster than he can
blink. He just had an encounter with an alien—a once-in-a-lifetime event. No one else saw it.

***

In the middle of summer last year, our planetary neighbor Venus passed in front of the Sun. This cosmic walk lasted but eight hours, obscure to anyone
without eye protection. This too was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Even the lucky future centenarians among us probably won’t live to see the next transit.
Thousands, maybe millions saw it and science confirmed it.

***

Shadowed by the growing stalks of his crops, a restless farmer wakes to a disturbing sight. In the middle of his field, a geometric and cryptic pattern has
flattened a good percentage of his livelihood. He will go to the paper to report an alien visitation that neither he nor anyone else actually saw, and no
one could confirm.

***

We project our own hopes and fears, questions and answers, onto the cosmos. With eyes always on the skies, whatever comes through has profundity. Ages ago,
these sights were the objects of prophecy and myth. Some still are. Thanks to modern science, many of space’s mysteries are known to be eclipses or comets
or meteors or solar flares. We are the watchers. Events are scribbled in personal journals and official histories, spoken between friends and now shared on
the Internet. In fact, today is the best time in our short history to glimpse and identify the mysterious tendrils that reach into our home from space.
It’s the best time to verify who is watching the watchers.

If aliens really did visit Earth, we would quickly confirm their presence with the most distributed evidence in the history of human sharing. “Viral”
wouldn’t even begin to describe it. That evidence wouldn’t languish in the cabinet of some military bureaucrat. It would mark the person or government that
changed the world.

According to the National UFO reporting center, there are hundreds or even thousands of UFO sightings around the world
each year. It reports over 6,600 sightings just in the last ten months. That’s around twenty-two sightings per day—the same as if 1 percent of all daily
domestic flights in the US were UFOs. If aliens really were visiting us, such a number of sightings would provide ample evidence to confirm their
existence—enough evidence to rule out a planet, lens flare, or plane. As in Chelyabinsk, video cameras mounted on dashboards, recessed in phones, and
lining our streets would capture these rather common events for analysis. YouTube and other file sharing sites would be inundated with less than blurry and
definitely not “shopped” examples of alien visitors. Scientists would descend on the locales—as they did in Russia—retracing flight paths, calculating
velocities, and estimating masses (all from YouTube videos!). When millions of people each day have the opportunity to use the miniaturized computers in
their pockets to capture events much more common than giant meteors, you wouldn’t have to “want to believe” any more.

If we really have made contact with an extraterrestrial species, those who have would quickly shake off the “wingnut” stereotypes lobbed against them. They
would literally be some of our best and brightest.

Speaking with aliens ain’t easy. The chances that human technology is on par with a species that has been around long enough to overcome the perils of
interstellar travel are effectively zero. Aliens won’t speak any of our languages, know any of our scientists or icons, and they probably wont see,
gesture, or speak in any recognizable way. The incredibly clever individuals who have made contact would be able to speak in a way any scientifically
advanced species may recognize—the language of relativity, evolution, and mathematics. Universally known constants like the speed of light and the charge
of an electron would be known by heart. They would be able to converse like Einstein or theorize like Pythagoras.

A government conspiracy to cover up alien visits wouldn’t be. Any government that acknowledged (and took credit for) first contact would likely become the
most important institution in human history—the official ambassador to space. That institution would serve as our spokesperson, and be the one who would
have to demonstrate the value, in its entirety, of humanity. The summation of our knowledge and our art and our morality would be conveyed through this
body. If the aliens are a part of a larger contingent of space-faring species (perhaps a kind of federation…), then the government who had the actual
evidence and acknowledged first contact could define the most pivotal moment since our split from ape ancestors. It would fall on them to demonstrate our
worth, to pass the test of cosmic awareness, and, if our worst fears are founded, to defend us from an extra-terrestrial foe. Either way, there would be
few reasons why a person or government would not want the singular power to define history as pre- and post-contact.

But instead of verifying the most important evidence humanity could ever get, we see blurry (and doctored) photos and videos, listen to disparate anecdotes
and lucid dreams, and never receive anything nearly as clear as the evidence Chelyabinsk witnessed. When a once-in-a-hundred-years object comes through the
atmosphere above Russia and lingers for only a few seconds before disappearing, within hours scientists have trajectories and velocities. With a handful of
UFO sightings every day, we get nothing. No unexpected interference in transmissions, TV broadcasts, radio signals, or Wi-Fi strengths. No
physical sign of entry or exit. No contact with anyone who could do something about it. Of course, an advanced race of aliens may go about us as unnoticed
watchers—it is possible. Maybe they have some Prime Directive they must follow. But the evidence to say that we are watching them back is just not there.
It’s almost statistically impossible that life does not exist elsewhere in the universe (or other universes), but at the same time, given the evidence we
do not have, evidence that could confirm a meteor strike or enemy aircraft in our airspace or an alien craft, the idea that aliens constantly visit us can
be reduced to the absurd.

She hesitated when the priest asked, “Do you take this man…” in anticipation of the ring. Its size would symbolize more than her future marital status; it
would create happiness. She said the words: “I do.” She saw her imminent husband move the ring from its small folding box towards her finger—it
was enormous. Reflexively, she sighed with relief. When crystals really do generate happiness, health, and well-being, diamonds are everyone’s best friend.

If crystals really did have some power to heal the body and the mind, studies of married couples would always be missing something intangible. Like how
studies of intelligence systematically miss some unnamed component, every analysis linking socioeconomic status or psychological disposition to the state
of a marriage would be off—those diamonds are forever after all. Social and mental factors explain much, but in tandem with the vibrating power in couples’
rings the whole picture would be clear as, well, you know.

Along with love and marriage, crystals with actual power would bring death and destruction. Once our scientists started identifying the gemstones of the
best “frequency,” prices for them would increase around the world. Conflict-ridden areas already stressed by the diamond trade would be pushed a bit
further as prices rise. The gemstones would make their way into stores around the world, and their cuts and qualities would soon denote different
properties. Jewelers try their hand at crafting the perfectly cut “healing stone.” Others reject this molecular sculpting and push for more “organic”
stones. Quartz paperweights could be worth a fortune.

Crystals are everywhere. Simply put, they are solids with atoms, ions, or molecules ordered in a consistent pattern in three-dimensional space. There’s a
good chance that there are even crystals inside the screen you read this on. Liquid-crystal displays, surely in the homes of millions of people, take
advantage of crystalline properties as well. If crystals really did output energy to get one’s qi in check, sitting too close to the TV screen would no
longer be a mother’s worry, but rather a requirement.

The ubiquity of crystalline structures in nature means that geology itself is the largest gem shop. Why spend money on chakra amulets and glittering key
chains when a whole strata beneath your feet likely has enough crystal power preserved within it to last a lifetime of vibrational readjustments. Grab a
trowel and some Birkenstocks and get digging! And if crystals really could cure, this cave in Mexico would be flooded with sickly patients like a
faith-healing megachurch. However, assuming a decent distribution of crystals throughout the Earth’s surface, it would be next to impossible to determine
which crystal was soothing which aura and when (as any shaman worth his or her salt would know).

If crystals helped and healed through “vibrations” and “frequencies,” sitting in front of a radio would be the next best thing to a doctor’s visit. There
is nothing particularly unique about a frequency. It is a process that repeats over time—like the revolutions of a CD in a stereo or the pulses of pressure
waves in air. Any geologist or physicist could identify the crystals that did put out a frequency almost immediately…and then the black market of frequency
healing would spring forth. The calming effect of quartz would be patented and licensed by large corporations, costing the average consumer, while
back-alley drifters would offer a quick fix of hertz played from a small speaker to get anyone’s qi going on the cheap.

Of course, gems and crystals do not produce sound or vibrate noticeably in hand, so it would be very important to find the frequency that works for you. If
humans did have a resonant frequency that could be tapped into, there would feasibly be some rate at which we could be vibrated to the point of shattering
like a wine glass in front of the proverbial opera singer. To think of the New Age shaman who would first have to hit you over the head with a tuning fork
in order to recommended the proper stone…

It would be odd to see dump trucks pulling up behind hospitals to deposit the latest load of gemstones, but that would be the norm if crystals really had
healing properties. Word would spread quickly throughout the medical community. Miracle cancer cures are suppressed by Big Pharma, of course, but there
would be simply too many rocks to send back to the quarry to keep a crystal cure under wraps. Doctors would prescribe sulfur to absorb the negative energies of their patients. Nurses would go from ward to ward adjusting
the placement of rocks on abdomens and foreheads. The next Nobel Prize in medicine would go to the lucky researcher who published the establishing paper,
“On the Healing Properties of Crystalline Minerals.” Grant money would flood in from the government. Mines the world over would be dug to aid in the battle
against what ails us. Pharmacies would sell less potent versions of the healing stones discovered by doctors. People on the street and in their homes would
ask each other over dinner: “Crystals can heal the human body, haven’t you heard, have you been living under a rock?” For your health’s sake, I hope so.

But instead of having the answer to all our maladies stuck in stone beneath our feet, crystals, while something to look at and study, have no biological or
physical mechanisms through which they could affect human health. Perhaps a glittering diamond would make you happy, and therefore alleviate stress or give
you calm, but it certainly does not tap into a yet undiscovered “human frequency” like someone searching for a radio station. Nothing about the natural
world suggests that a certain arrangement of a mineral’s atoms will do anything for the human body other than please the eye. Can we reduce crystal healing
to the absurd?

Dick Van Dyke’s home had terrible feng shui. Improper positioning had him stumbling, fumbling, and tumbling all over the house. The futon in the living
room had a particularly negative qi about it. To think of all the slapstick sitcoms we would be deprived of if feng shui were true…

If feng shui were true, already unbearable construction delays in major cities would be dwarfed by the demands of magnetism. The magnetic compass—built
specifically for the practice of feng shui—guides modern feng shui application, and would dictate giant, regular shifts in the world’s architecture. The
true magnetic north of our planet moves around like a cosmic stir stick in coffee, meaning that the proper alignment of a desk, room, or building moves as
well.

To optimize the flow of qi, whole cities would need to shift every so often. Counties that could not afford the grand re-alignments would undergo
terrible consequences. As magnetic poles wobbled, people would begin to feel sick and uneasy in their own homes. Others would experience piercingly odd
feelings of “oneness.” Culture would begin to adapt accordingly. Certain months of the year would bring a general “lack of wellness” to a society. Alerts
of shifting alignments would go out like air quality warnings. A neighbor’s house, now negatively positioned relative to your own, would affect you
personally. Like accusations of witchcraft in the middle ages, a world where feng shui was true makes condemnation of a neighbor as simple as “they make me
feel sick.”

With a reliance on the Earth’s magnetic field, true feng shui would drive a demand for consumer compasses. Smart phones would be outfitted with sensors.
Dinner guests would have ample reason to avoid a tour of your home if the compass said so. But compass reliance also makes certain parts of the world
uninhabitable. Building a positively positioned home at either of our planet’s poles, for example, would be impossible. With magnetic north so close, even
walking a few feet to the right or left in such a home would drastically change the relative alignments of the structures within.

If feng shui worked, the optimal layouts for buildings would enter “best practices” manuals in architecture. Schools would have desks and hallways oriented
in such a way as to promote learning. Hospitals would do the same with staircases, beds, and surgical theaters to promote healing. Feng shui masters would
descend regularly to houses expecting children, ensuring the proper environment. “Energetic” layouts would be on every bachelor’s mind.

The DMV would get a radical overhaul to reduce the stress within its walls.

Along with developing a handful of layouts for use in all architecture, true feng shui would redefine zoning laws for cities. Based on yin and yang polarities, certain districts would be placed in close proximity. Hospitals would be constructed near boxing rings. Gyms would be kiddy
corner to candy stores. Prisons would be opposite police stations.

Personal warfare gets nasty in a world were feng shui theory is true. Angry with Johnson from accounting? Move his stapler two-inches to the left. At home,
artificial emotion becomes dinner talk. Are you and your spouse actually fighting, or is the planter in the corner not properly aligned with the Dark
Turtle trigram? Do you really think he never opens up to you, or did you forget to find the correct astrological constellation to
turn the couch toward?

If feng shui worked, it would be simple enough to verify. Like testing a new mattress to see how it feels, a freelancing feng shui master could demonstrate
his or her services to a homeowner. The master would first blindfold the homeowner, and then proceed to rearrange furniture and knickknacks around the
home. Each variation would produce different emotions and senses of well-being. The blindfolded homeowner would of course be able to tell the difference,
stopping the master when the home felt “just right.”

But despite all the western decorators and stylists who advocate for it and preach its functionality, feng shui has no empirical support. The only real
flavor of feng shui that widely exists today is a western one, without any historical backing and relying on New Age “feelings” rather than an actual
device or astrological constellation. Even in the country of its origin, China, feng shui has been largely discouraged or banned outright as a “feudalistic
superstitious practice” after the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949.

Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit priest doing missionary work in China, said it best more than 400 years ago:

What could be more absurd than their imagining that the safety of a family, honors, and their entire existence must depend upon such trifles as a door
being opened from one side or another, as rain falling into a courtyard from the right or from the left, a window opened here or there, or one roof being
higher than another?

You are not special, the stars and planets decided that at your birth. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake, as Tyler Durden might say. In fact, all
your complexities and quirks, your desires and passions, everything you have done or will do fits neatly into what looks like a twelve-slice pie chart
laden with calligraphy. A snowflake you are not if astrology were true.

Despite what your mother may have told you, if astrology were true there would be at least hundreds of thousands of people who share in your uniqueness.
Indeed, if astrologers could determine your personality and future from your hour and date of birth, there would be 8,760 different combinations available.
With 7.1 billion people on the planet this means around 810,000 people would each receive your exact
horoscope, your wisdom from the wandering planets above, your future. Human psychology may be broken up into general personality traits, but astrology
breaks up human life into less possible variations than the combinations of a 2x2x2 Rubik’s Cube.

If astrology were true, society would fracture. Over time we would learn what days of the year gave rise to what kinds of people. Like parents who want
their children to become professional hockey players, mothers would calculate
conception and birthing times in order to give their son or daughter a particular star sign. Pharmaceutical companies would make a killing developing the
drugs that allowed mothers to delay and control births more effectively. Being born into a specific astrological sign would create grand social rifts.
Different schools would spring up as they did for different religions in twentieth century Ireland. Potential mates would need not only good looks but also
descendants who shared the same sign. Libras and Aries would be
the modern Capulets and Montagues.

Studies would be undertaken to establish the psychology determined by stars and planets. The zodiac would replace Myers Briggs. Modern descriptions of
psychopathy would include “being a Gemini” as a defining symptom. The Diagnostic
and Statistics Manual cites Mercury as much as it does brain chemistry in a world where astrology is true.

Political parties would also incorporate star signs. Candidates run on the basis of how compatible they are with Cancers and Leos—perhaps key demographics.
The Speaker of the House would need to be in the astrological 10th House. And
when faraway stars eventually shift enough to change star signs, revolutions follow.
A new type of human would enter the mix every few centuries. The status quo would be forever challenged by the whims of gravity.

As we look to the stars, we inevitably imagine traveling to other worlds. That would be a mistake if astrology were true. Colonists making a home for
themselves on some far away planet would have a completely different astrological profile—their constellations would be entirely different, as would the
surrounding planets. Panic ensues with no horoscopes to guide them. Babies born there would then have personalities yet unseen on Earth. Inhabiting a
potential Goldilocks planet like Kepler-62e would quickly
produce new kinds of lovers, fighters, and psychopaths.

Back on Earth, the stars and planets in the sky would affect each and every baby born via gravity, meaning that delivery rooms would need to be as pristine
as microchip labs if astrology were true. Even a fly landing on the mother’s stomach before birth would affect her more than the gravity of Saturn.

Forget the news, horoscopes are gospel when astrology is true. Dwindling science sections of newspapers are outright discontinued as the future-divining astrologers devour column space. Don’t worry about
who you might meet or where your life is going, that is up to the wobble and wanderings of Mars, they say. And after any day’s reading, good or bad, our
solar system will eventually replay that particular planetary configuration like a cosmic vinyl record. Your future is simplified. Every so often the
planets will conspire to bring about the same set of outcomes from the infinitely possible ones. Hope you saved your horoscope from a few years back, you
are going to receive (another) interesting business proposal once those planets realign.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Expect to be bored.

But instead of having a limited number of human personalities and determined destinies, psychological effects can explain exactly why horoscopes are so appealing (and seem spot-on) and analyses of horoscopes themselves reveal no distinct advice among twelve supposedly
separate groups. With no force in the known universe able to link the motion of planets and stars to human births, personalities, or lives, can we reduce
astrology to the absurd?

The largest fleet of aircraft the world has ever seen was created to poison it. Millions of planes criss-cross the skies, dumbing down the populace with
secret and powerful chemical agents. Every time you board a plane, you can’t look out a window without seeing one of these jet-powered poisoners. There is
always danger overhead when chemtrails really do cover the sky.

If the chemtrail conspiracy were true, millions of pilots would be needed to crop dust the American population. A typical crop duster might use seven ounces of agent diluted in seven gallons of water to
cover one acre of land. Chemtrail “people dusters” would use a similar concentration to cover the entire United States, just to be safe. For 2.38 billion
acres of land, the pilots would then need—for just one week of spraying—120 billion gallons of these cryptic chemicals. That’s around the same
volume as is transported in all the world’s oil tankers in one year. And such an incredible amount of agent would need an incredible number of planes.
Considering that a large air freighter like a Boeing 747 can carry around 250,000 pounds of cargo, at the very least, the government would need to schedule four million 747 flights to spread their chemicals each week—eighteen times more flights per day than in the entire US.

Unless a plane could make multiple runs per day, a true chemtrail conspiracy would need 2,700 times as many 747s as have ever been constructed.

An infrastructure large enough to cover the country in chemicals would make the skies look like Coruscant. Pilots—not the millions in
on the scheme—never pick up on the increased traffic. It’s a mystery to them that they never report, and they never scan the communication channels to find
out what is going on. They don’t question that they have to wait an hour while half a dozen unmarked planes make their descents. A world with a chemtrail
conspiracy means the most skilled vehicle operators on the planet have no idea who is operating the other vehicles or why. Ever.

Property values across the country plummet, as the most populated areas are inundated with airplane traffic and the associated noise. The government
thought about putting the planes higher up in the atmosphere, but the higher they go, the more agent they would need—and that only leads to more planes,
pilots, and secrecy. At this point the government might not even need a secret, stupefying chemical—if hundreds of millions of Americans never catch on to
the millions of passenger-less planes overhead everyday, who needs to spend all that money on devious research and development?

The incognito infrastructure needed to conceal the chemtrail conspiracy would dwarf any other governmental agency. Millions of people—pilots, engineers,
chemists, data analysts, and boots-on-the-ground hazmat teams—would need top-secret clearance for information that could never get out. If a chemtrail
conspiracy were true, chances are you would run into a few involved in the cover up everyday. An effort to keep millions of mouths silent—to keep any
information from pilots or participants out of the media—makes the NSA look like child’s play.

A chemtrail conspiracy comes with collateral damage. Many mechanics that work on crop dusters around the world are routinely, acutely poisoned by the chemicals the pilots seek to spread. If any significant
percentage of the legion of mechanics needed to keep the chemtrail fleet flying had the same risk, literally millions of workers would come home poisoned.
Spouses and significant others rush them to hospitals across the US, and the cause of this nation-wide plague never raises any eyebrows. No doctors file
reports or do studies on the mysterious poisonings, no journalists ever get wind of something awry, and no police officers think a serial contaminator is
on the loose. Even though every American would have a consistent chemical profile from any blood test, no one is the wiser. Every single piece of paperwork
finds its proper place, deep in a file drawer of some bureaucrat keeping the lid on the chemtrail conspiracy.

Unless the air was visibly thick with the government’s chemicals, everyone would have varying degrees of exposure to the aerosolized agent. The dose makes the poison, so one neighbor might be slightly
more mind-controlled than another. Like a case of mass hysteria, family and friends and strangers begin to change. People notice the spread. One day at the
office Bob is asking questions about the right to privacy and the next day he has a Rumsfeld bumper sticker. Thankfully, the conspiracy is so tightly woven
that it is all played off as some unidentified epidemic. Would you like a Bush ’04 button?

Instead of having the world’s largest workforce constantly spraying chemicals above the clouds, this is simply a case of misidentified physics. The
differences in temperature and pressure between plane engines, wingtips, and the surrounding air coax water to condense into trails that routinely spread
out into cloud-like sheets. If these trails really were part of a conspiracy, it would require more planes than the world has on hand, more workers than
could ever keep a secret, and more ignorance than can even be afforded to the American people. Can we reduce the chemtrail conspiracy to the absurd?

]]>MoonacyWed, 31 Jul 2013 13:13:00 EDTinfo@csicop.org ()http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/moonacy
http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/moonacy
When the police began the booking process the handcuffed man blamed everything on a mosquito. The bloodsucker landed on his arm and he went berserk. The
obvious change in gravity changed an otherwise calm man into a lunatic. Once every month—though sometimes twice a month—the police have it even worse. No
cop wants to walk his or her beat at night when a full moon really has the power to change the populace.

Our moon has about as much gravitational effect on the body of any one person as a mosquito sitting on someone’s arm. If the amount of gravity the moon
commands really did affect rates of crime, suicide, homicide, depression, and accidents, any swarm of the pests would be a flying disaster waiting to
happen. The same gravitational truth exists for anything larger than the tiny insects. The laptop or monitor or smartphone that you are reading this on
right now has more gravitational influence on you than our moon. Hold any of these too close to you and you might go on a rampage if the assumptions of
“lunacy” were true.

If the moon itself, and not its gravity, was the instigator of madness, the famous Apollo landing missions should have worried about than just rocket
trajectory and weight restrictions. Neil Armstrong would have made a giant leap towards insanity.

The mysterious power of the moon—if it did influence the violent crimes that mental health professionals and police officers dread each
month—would increase the number of homicides around the time it shines brightest. But does it? I usually like to continue down hypothetical tangents in
this column, but we actually have data that can answer this particular question. (Frankly, the presumptions of the full moon effect are so bizarre—grave
misunderstandings about gravity and tides, for example—that I think it is too abstract to even think of a world where these presumptions were true.)

In 2012, the city of Chicago recorded 512 first-degree murders. Using the only public database with daily updates that I could find, I took each case and
plotted it on a graph showing the date and number of homicides on each recorded date. If the moon truly could create a madness all its own, we would expect
a visualization of these crimes to look something like this—a full moon atop each rise in homicide:

Each of the moons in the graphic is placed on or near the highest incidences of homicide across the months. A real full-moon effect should predict these
positions to coincide with the actual full moon dates of 2012. But when we place the full moons in accordance with the dates they actually occurred, we see
this:

On most of the dates of the full moon, there were no recorded homicides. This is small-scale analysis, but it goes against exactly what should happen over
a year of violent crime in a major American city if the full moon had some effect. Remember, the moon is always full; it is just lit differently
throughout the month.

Confirmation bias may keep it alive, but at larger scales like national
studies and smaller scales like homicides in Chicago last year, the “full-moon effect” is reduced to the absurd.

Other Reductio ad Absurdum Columns

]]>When All of Us Are NostradamusThu, 11 Jul 2013 14:35:00 EDTinfo@csicop.org ()http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/when_all_of_us_are_nostradamus
http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/when_all_of_us_are_nostradamusAre you Psychic? By C. P.

You open up the morning paper to check the obituaries. With a shaking hand, you read what you’ve been dreading all along—your own name. Your number is up;
your fate is sealed. Sometime in the next month you are going to die. Everyone knows it. And you know it, too. At least you have time to choose your own
epitaph. You’re psychic; everyone is, or at least has the potential to be.

Peeking at the hand fate dealt you is commonplace in a world where psychics actually exist. For them, the future is as clear as the past, though abilities
would range from Spidey sense to Oracle at Delphi. The most powerful seers—the Nostradamuses, if
you will—among them wouldn’t be relegated to pricey phones lines. Such powers almost demand public service. A Minority Report-style pre-cognition
division would surely spring up in every police department that could afford one. Seismologists and volcanologists could no longer be persecuted for inadequate predictions—the
onus would be on the psychics to alert the public of impending natural disasters. Predicting better than even our best computer models, tune in for the
psychic weather forecast on the nightly news.

If people had psychic future-sight every phone number would be for a Miss Cleo. Casinos around the world would close. Gambling isn’t a matter of luck
anymore; can you predict the snake eyes or not? And the lottery hardly seems fair when any real psychic could pluck the numbers from the tealeaves.
Insurance plans would diversify and skyrocket. When a psychic insurance agent could predict a cancer diagnosis, future-existing conditions are what they
will deny. Forget about the heat of competition. Every sports team is a group of players on a stage going through the determined script until the last
whistle blows.

Raising children in a world full of actual psychics would involve going through another stage of development: existential turmoil. If a psychic taps into
the loom of fate to see where a string weaves, children would quickly learn that they live in a determined world. Perhaps they will learn about free will
like psychology students learn about behaviorism—a clever idea that eventually fell by the wayside in the light of how the world really is. Is anyone
really responsible for his or her actions? Should we punish criminals if they are beholden to fate and not sadistic whim? Parents in a world full of real
psychics wouldn’t look forward to fielding such questions. The “birds and the bees” talk is much easier to handle.

Real psychics wouldn’t just grasp the future. They would be able to sense beyond what an eye or ear can tell them—a “sixth sense” for objects and feelings.
Marriage disputes over where the hell the remote is are no more. Car keys, if not in the pocket, are never lost. Neither are children or loved ones. Real
psychics wouldn’t be the laughing stocks of detectives anymore; they would be their saviors. Resolving a manhunt or Amber Alert would be a simple matter of
having the psychic manpower (and psychic children would find hide and seek pretty boring). Every cold case would be hot again.

The best real psychics would be on par with Professor X—mentalists who wouldn’t have to rely on parlor tricks to see inside a mind. Reading minds would
change love lives. Potential lovers on a first date wouldn’t have to wonder “does she like my cologne” or “does he notice my twinkling eye.” But mind games
go both ways. First daters might also want to invest in psychic-proof helmets
like Magneto if they have something more amorous in mind.

With the help of real psychics, we could finally answer questions whose answers would send waves across scientific fields. Are other animals conscious like us? Do they feel pain? Just ask them psychically. We could communicate with “locked-in” patients to discover what happens to the brain when the body undergoes too much trauma to
speak (yet another reason to throw away “facilitated communication”).

The scientific advances might be masked by the drawbacks of a world where there are true psychics. The ability to read a thought is the key to the last
lock of privacy. When the shelter of the skull can be penetrated by psychic power, a potential new way to oppress arises. The “thought crimes” of 1984 would be legislated under mentally conservative politicians. The private and sometimes terrible thoughts we have would stain us socially in
the minds of others. Whenever we look over a great edge and think about jumping, or about pushing
others…When we fantasize about killing that dog incessantly barking in the middle of the night…All the natural thoughts we never act on but embarrassingly
sequester even within our own minds would be there for others to search and judge and stereotype and ridicule and hate.

For centuries, ethicists have had to work from theories of mind—what we imagine others to be thinking—instead of actual minds. In a world where a psychic
could really capture a thought not his or her own, ethics would have to be revolutionized. The Fifth Amendment would be useless. You can’t avoid
incriminating yourself when you can’t avoid telepathic examination. The ethics of accessing minds would germinate whole new fields of thought.

A world full of real psychics would include those who converse with the dead. (We’d have at least 100 billion ghosts to talk to.) John Edward or Sylvia Browne wouldn’t have to
ask a crowd if anyone had a family member who died with a name starting with “P”—it would be completely obvious to them. Of course, such mediums would be
out of work, as any world full of psychic powers would produce people with a higher hit rate than Sylvia—that is to say, better than practically zero. As amazing as talking to your dead
relatives would be, the truth would come out in a psychic world: not everyone’s grandmother can be proud of them.

But instead of seeing a world filled with real expressions of psychic power, we see conflation, cold reading, and cons. And coincidence doesn’t mean a
thing; it would be weirder
if you didn’t have a dream that seemingly predicted the future. Though 40 percent of the public believes in extra-sensory perception, only two percent of scientists in the National Academy of Sciences think it has
been demonstrated1. Despite this, so-called psychic fortunetellers and grief vampires take money all over the world for their predictions and
premonitions, without making any serious changes to society. Could you reduce psychic powers to the absurd?

Reference

McConnell, R.A., and Clark, T.K. 1991. “National Academy of Sciences' Opinion on Parapsychology” Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 85, 333–365.

A neuron fires. Then another. An electrochemical cascade surges across your cerebral cortex. If we had brain scanners advanced enough, we could tell that
this neuronal thunderstorm was the result of an intense focusing on a brand new Bentley. The vibrations emanate from your head and the universe feels them. It responds in kind. In no time at all, you have a new car. You thank
the universe for manifesting your wish. The law of attraction proves itself again.

If The Secret weren’t a secret but a reality, “attractiveness” would take on an altogether different meaning. Like degrees of physical
attractiveness, everyone would have a degree of mental ability to manifest anything they desired. Shoes, cars, diamonds, lovers, outcomes, anything. If
brain waves could really make it out of the head and into some cosmic crucible of creation, neurology would be radically transformed (not to mention that
it would become the most groundbreaking science in history). Probing the inner workings of the brain would no longer require invasive surgery or less
precise EEG technology. If the universe could hear your thoughts, so could Dr. Novella.

Birthdays would be decidedly more boring. When anyone can simply think themselves a present, you would really have to “keep Christ in Christmas,” because
there wouldn’t be much else. Throngs of expectant children would sit on Christmas morning rapt in contemplation until that Red Ryder BB gun finds its way
under the tree. “Black Friday” and “cyber Monday” wouldn’t be spent in enormous lines or on heavily loaded servers but in moments of extreme visualization.

If intense mental focus and desire did sent out a requisition form to the universe, men would be plagued with embarrassing deliveries. Those men who
actually did think about sex every seven seconds would surely ruin a few brunches. Visualizing pornography would manifest millions of confused, and nude,
actors.

When your spending is limited only by imagination, fashion loses the true meaning of the term. No longer can one establish class by the clothes and
accessories one can afford. It’s a liberating, if a bit bland, turn of events. The intense request for the finer things in life would stress production
lines around the world. Why Bentley and Rolex ramped up production would be a mystery to them, though the final owners of each product would be known to
the cosmos. Oprah was right about one thing: if the law of attraction worked, “everyone gets a car!”

The universe works in mysterious ways, or so The Secret says. All cosmic deliveries would be serendipitous surprises. Delivery trucks around the
world would always be driven by coincidence and whim. “Oh, you wanted this Armani suit? I just happen to have a free one here in my truck! Lucky you!” No
one can track their orders from the universe, but at least they get there.

Of course, everyone is famous when you can think anything into being. Celebrity would become meaningless, with everyone famous for no reason. Seven billion
Kardashians.

Money seems pointless when anything can be birthed from your brain, to the stars, and to your front door. How hard something is to visualize is now the
global value system. A sandwich? Two minutes of moderate focus. A promotion? Two weeks.

There is a dark side to a world where thinking is doing. Every accident, every illness, every misfortune is either the result of negative thinking or
insufficient positive thinking. Cancer patients with a poor prognosis do not want a cure enough. Starving African children need to start visualizing some roast beef and gravy but don’t. Can’t escape poverty? It’s your
fault for poor mental imagery. The ghetto got you down? Blame yourself for not asking the universe for more. “Be positive” isn’t a recommendation, it’s a
requirement. You have no right to be without wealth or opportunity. Visualize it!

If the law of attraction were the norm, so would blaming the victim.

The calculus of contemplation is bad enough. The universe would have to arbitrate between what would surely be millions of similar requests for fame or
fortune. Who gets the Bentley? Maybe it comes down to who wanted it more. But this still means that the medical patient that didn’t get better didn’t wantenough to get better. The universe works in mysterious ways, unless you want a new cocktail dress; then you just have to think
really hard about it.

Crime is another conundrum in a world where attraction doesn’t describe magnetism or sex. How does one solve a murder that was visualized? CSI would have
to be outfitted with the latest in neurotechnology. Minority Report-style pre-cogs would need to be brought in to determine when a dirty deed
would be visualized and when. The violation of privacy today is nothing compared to when the FBI and IRS needs a record of what you thought about in the
last six months.

Instead of thoughts venturing outside the brain to call the customer service of the cosmos, wealth, material gain, and inequality are accounted for by
things we can’t control—parents, date of birth, genetics, environment, and a bit of luck. “Life coaches” can advise a serious visualization regiment that
seems to work because affluent, white, western people have the opportunities to get what they desire. Meanwhile, the philosophy of “attraction” easily
rationalizes the needless suffering of millions now and millions to come. The world would be a glut of wealth and fame and instant gratification if The Secret were no secret. What do you see?

More humans have died than you will ever meet, see, or learn about. Since our split from the apes, Earth has been littered with the detritus of human
demise—nearly 110 billion bodies. If spirits did live on after
death, most of the people you meet will have already met their end.

Every single house on Earth would be haunted by default.

If becoming a ghost were the next stage of life after death, our planet would be absolutely packed with ectoplasm. Earth currently harbors over seven billion human beings, all very much alive. We pack them in skyscrapers and in endless suburbs. But
adding another 110 billion souls to the population would make everyone a neighbor. If ghosts could interact with matter, they would need space to haunt,
and in the United States, we value our space. If the seven billion humans alive today wanted to live like Americans, they would need over four times the landmass currently available on Earth. By
extrapolation, all the haunting space required by ghosts would push that number to 185 times all the landmass on Earth. If ghosts existed, you couldn’t
throw a rock without hitting one (or it passing through one). Ghost hunter’s thermal cameras would see a blur of reds and blues wherever they looked.

Famous for being able to pass through matter, ghosts might simply pack together instead of being neighbors to everyone on the planet. Just how much space
these phantasmal people would require is impossible to determine. How many ghosts could fit on the head of a pin? How many Ghostbusters’ ecto-containment
chambers would you need to hold them all?

A new view of death accompanies real-life ghosts. When the body is just a vessel—a way station for the eternal spirit—life is a race to your best self. If
ghosts manifest themselves as a picture of the person at the instant they died, old, grotesque ghosts would evaporate. Like how most animals strive to
raise their children to reproductive maturity, all humans would occupy this material plane only until they looked however they wanted to look for eternity.
Droves of twenty-somethings would commit suicide, seeking to remain young for all time. Billions of Dorian Grays make their pacts with death. Why live
until you are old if you are bound to exist in that form forever? “Live fast, die young” is sound advice in a world where ghosts exist.

Carrying on as a ghost taking the last form of the deceased still would be spooky. Unfortunate fetuses and grotesque accident victims would float around
with the twenty-something ghosts who had control over their demise. The universe extinguishes the lives of millions of children under the age of five each
year. A world where ghosts exist suffers the hauntings of billions of supremely creepy (and presumably naked) baby ghosts.

If you thought the NSA’s spying was bad, a world filled with spooks has
no privacy at all. Able to float through walls and haunt at will, each of the 110 billion ghosts is a real-life Santa Claus. They see you when you’re
sleeping; they know when you’re awake. They know when you’ve been bad or good; so don’t do anything you wouldn’t want every single ancestor you have to see
and judge you on.

The cottage séance industry quickly tanks, because whom your great aunt wants you to marry is a simple haunt away. The sale of ghost hunter tools like EMF detectors and thermal imaging cameras would skyrocket. Knowing when you
are truly alone would be big business. And if ghosts do interact through electromagnetic radiation, as hunters claim, we might have to re-think our radio
and Wi-Fi systems. Dearly departed grandmothers would mess with our Internet.

Death is no longer a release in a world where ghosts exist. The paranoia that comes from knowing every member of the human race can judge each and every
action you take would surely create a new form of PTSD. But being in contact with a dead relative that can phase through walls has its benefits. Every
locked door would be effectively transparent. Earth would be filled with 110 billions lenses of truth. The
term secret would lose its value.

Depending on ghost “rules,” there might be far fewer than you’d expect. If the only ghosts that remain after death have “unfinished business,” at least it
wouldn’t be so crowded. But if even a small percentage of humans were wronged before death, you would have to deal with billions of ornery phantoms—surely
enough to make their presence known.

Instead of asking “who you gonna call” every second of every day, there remains no evidence of the life of death. Where there should be billions of ghosts,
there are bumbling investigators, specks of dust in camera lenses, and psychologically dubious recollections. We should be swimming in ghastly illusions,
so what do you see?

]]>The Miracle of Molecular MedicineThu, 30 May 2013 14:35:00 EDTinfo@csicop.org ()http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/the_miracle_of_molecular_medicine
http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/the_miracle_of_molecular_medicine
The germ theory of disease revolutionized our view of the small organisms that plaster our planet, inhabiting every corner of the continents and our
bodies. It allowed modern science to dissipate the harmful miasma that pre-modern medicine sought to remedy. But the organisms that can make us sick are
nowhere near as dangerous as a world where every particle might be poison. It’s a world where homeopathy works.

If homeopathy worked, its tenets would carve out new medical, ethical, and economic landscapes. Like would cure like, water would have memory, and extreme
dilution would flip the potency curve of chemicals 180 degrees. You could become your own doctor, but you could also drop dead without warning.

A Disease For What Ails You

Forget placebos, a world where homeopathy works is a world without disease.

Homeopathy strives to find remedies that produce the same symptoms as the ailment of the patient, meaning that all disease would be a potential cure for
itself. Allergy problems? Make a remedy out of outside allergens and drink it (what do you do for irritable bowel syndrome?). Problem solved, in a world where
homeopathy works.

When homeopathy is a medical reality, diseases and cures are in constant tension, like the struggle between anti-matter and matter. The unstoppable force
and the immovable object; the Joker and Batman. Each malady is a potential miracle. If a cure were just an anti-disease, medicine would encounter an
enormous ethical obstacle. With all the potential cures available in our bodies, herb gardens, and duck livers, the question is no longer how should we
treat, but who should we treat. To meet the demand of an ailing population, enormous storehouses of homeopathic tinctures would need to be erected. Like
the Svalbard Global Seed Vault does for the world’s
seeds, tincture vaults would safely store cancer cells, allergens, viruses, and other anti-diseases.

You are your own doctor, your own specialist, to the delight of holistic healers, when homeopathy works. Homeopaths advise you on potencies, but medicine
would basically be in your hands. Recipes are free for all to see and make.
With this knowledge shift, entire academic medical institutions would shut down their learning programs. Medicine as we know it falls out of favor when a
decade of traditional medical school is abandoned for homeopathic educations. The crippling debt of US medical students flows back into the
economy, maybe to be spent on the massive demand for Oscillococcinum.

What Is Water’s RAM?

Our ancestors lived in a “middle-world.” The objects and interactions that they had to worry about were middle-sized, moving at a middle-speed, changing in
middle-time. Our evolved perception of a middle-world is partly the reason why staring up at the night sky can be so evocative, or why looking into a
microscope and seeing life can be so moving.

Because of our middle-perception, it’s hard to handle the fact that there are more molecules in a cup of water than cups of water in all the world’s
oceans. We can’t accurately conceptualize the idea that you have had molecules in you that were in dinosaurs, and in Hitler, by probability alone. And we
would have trouble accepting that in a world where homeopathy works, where water has memory, water knows more about you than Facebook.

If water remembered what was diluted in it, your DNA-imprinted excretions would quickly circle the Earth. Following the water cycle, your water-diluted DNA
flows through meters of intestines, eventually into a toilet, into a water treatment plant, and finally back into a body of water that shares its molecules
with the sky. Considering all the things that water could remember—dinosaur pee, Genghis Khan’s morning tea—homeopaths could access whatever memories they
want in a world where their theories are correct. Aiding police and investigation agencies around the world, homeopaths could access anyone’s DNA in
wastewater. New databases would spring up. Cold cases could be closed. Homeopathic detectives would shame psychic ones.

Soon, water memory purifying machines would be engineered. When any molecule of water that passes through you could speak volumes, privacy protection goes
to the nano-scale. With such power residing in water’s RAM, infrastructure around the world would have to be rerouted as people increasingly refuse to
drink water that somehow retains its fecal quality. The Clean Water Act would have to be completely redrawn.

When homeopathy works, when a pool could “know” precisely who peed in it, current technology like memory-foam has nothing on memory-water.

Less is More

A remedy doesn’t need an active ingredient when homeopathy works. Nearly anything could be diluted into watery oblivion, flipping each and every
dose-response curve for every drug known to man a full 180 degrees. An uphill curve becomes a downhill slope. Potency would be measured in atoms, not
milligrams. To cope with the reversal, engineers would have to innovate the most sensitive scales ever devised. We have experimented with yottagram resolution scales—able to measure individual protons—and these
would be sensitive enough, but they first need practicality and then mass production.

The dark side of homeopathic potency is that any dangerous chemical, any particle of poison, is grim death. Ultra-filtered gas masks would become part of
the national uniform, because inhaling even a few atoms of lead would lead to a neurotoxic demise in a world where homeopathic principles are true. The old
medical adage that pretty much everything is carcinogenic at some level would dominate new information campaigns about safe breathing habits. Would-be
poisoners would become the most devious of murderers when a lethal dose of arsenic is measured in yottagrams.

Drunkards would have the time of their lives in a world where homeopathy worked. Ethanol diluted in water in any amount makes the drink a spirit. The lower
the alcoholic content the better. You would need a microscope to find a drunkard’s flask.

When the remedy revolution comes, the economics of medicine would radically shift. Companies that exist solely for shipping medicine can now pack their
planes and trucks with a million times more material. Shipping costs plummet and medical costs soon follow. If one molecule or less can have some effect on
health, a cup of acetaminophen could treat the entire human population a billion times over.

Instead of a revolution on par with the germ theory of disease, homeopathy—in complete opposition to everything we know about biology and medicine—isn’t recommended for any clinical use. You know how the world would
change if homeopathy really worked, now what do you see?